This panorama was taken from the first bench below the top of the pit
and shows the north end of the pit and the small protrusion of the pit to
the south east. The tunnel or portal half way down the north wall serves
two purposes in this mine. First, it provides a way for ore haul trucks
to access the bottom of the pit - the ramp continues underground and comes
out through the portal in the bottom of the pit. Second, the underground
ramp has allowed some exploratory tunneling to asses the feasibility of
doing underground mining as the pit gets deeper. Note that that work area
on the pit bottom has shrunk substantially from the 'footprint' of pit at
the ground surface. Mineralization more than about another hundred feet
below the pit floor will need to be mined as an undergound operation.

Examine the geology of the north pit wall. The main contact of the granite
with the country rock amphibolite is fairly obvious as are several additional
granitic intrusions. The same red-brown weathering profile is well developed
over the north end of the pit. In some areas it is difficult to discern
where the light-colored granite ends and the weathering begins.

Zoom in on the western margin of the large triangular mass of dark gray
country rock near the top of the north wall. Just below the 2nd bench, can
you see the very irrugular contact between the two dominant rock masses?
The margins of the largest white colored dike in the east wall are quite
sharp, most of the blurring seen when zooming in is caused by either loose
rock or image processing.